An interview-based collage probing the situation of Israeli exiles who have chosen Berlin as their new home. Stylish, postmodern and provocative in its intertwining of politics and sex, it offers a wild ride.
“Israeliness is complicated.” So speaks one of the participants in The New Jews, a principally interview-based collage probing the situation of Israeli exiles who have chosen Berlin as their new, multiculturally accommodating home. Beyond airing many political issues, the speakers – prominent among them the filmmaker, Amir Ovadia Steklov – are unafraid to discuss and document (in phone calls and text messages) their intriguing, uninhibited sex lives. And provocatively so, when erotic fantasies and practices connect, perversely, with the memory of Nazism…
Nominally a documentary, The New Jews overflows with creativity, including the staged scene of an unusual gynaecological examination, and extensive rotoscoping animation of photographed images. Even the necessary distortion of real faces and voices (so as to avoid identification and possible harassment of some subjects) becomes part of the postmodern style of the project. The film dares to revel in satirical, politically incorrect, hot-button comedy to make its serious points.
Originally produced in 2018 and 2019 and only now publicly released, The New Jews advances a case for the need to hear and acknowledge “the voices of Jewish-Israelis in exile, who have been silenced for too long.”
– Adrian Martin
Trailer
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Film details
- Country of production
- Germany
- Year
- 2025
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2025
- Length
- 80'
- Medium/Format
- DCP
